


Fathoms Below

by cookinguptales



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, F/F, Horror, Old Flames, Open Ending, Original Femslash, Romance, Unhealthy Relationships, monstrous mermaid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:36:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27302053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookinguptales/pseuds/cookinguptales
Summary: The mermaid always sings a song of what a sailor wishes for most. Amira wants to want her new life on land, but that isn't what she hears when Zelle sings to her.
Relationships: Former Pirate Turned Barista (Original Work)/Merperson (Original Work)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Fathoms Below

"We have an order out back, boss," Merrick told her, waving a ticket in her good hand. "Kelp latte, extra whip."

Amira raised her eyebrows. "Oh, is that so? Extra whip, eh?"

Merrick just wiggled her own eyebrows in response. "Might want to take that one yourself, boss. That kelp's just so finicky, y'know? I'm not sure I could do it justice." She paused. "You know, for our honored guest."

Amira sighed. Sass. None of her crew had ever had nearly this much sass when they'd been on the open sea. But this landlocked life had made them soft. Or maybe it was just all the whipped cream. She pushed dark curls back behind her ear and made a mental note to retie her hair band after she finished this order.

Zelle didn't take kindly to waiting, after all.

Kelp _was_ finicky, though, and it still took Amira a few minutes to make the drink herself. It had taken her a while to master all the recipes once she'd hung up her captain's cap and converted the Hell's Deep into a houseboat. There'd been a lot of long nights, wasted milk, and muttered curses. But in the end, she'd figured it out. She'd had her Aunt Ida's recipes to guide her and an entire crew to taste-test for her.

Somehow, miraculously, she'd gotten them all to stay. They'd sailed into maelstroms for her, they'd dived to the bottom of the ocean itself, parlayed with sea witches and bridled monsters. But somehow, this was still the scariest thing she'd ever asked of them. Maybe it was because for the first time, it had been a request and not an order.

Amira'd thought that her heart was going to beat right out of her chest that first morning, when she'd expected to come downstairs to an empty bar and maybe a dagger for her troubles. But Merrick had just been peaceably mopping the floor and Newsom had been trying to figure out how to take inventory.

Newsom always had been the best with numbers.

So now Amira had a little slice of paradise all her own. It had been dingy and ramshackle when they'd started out, but now the wood gleamed in the sunlight and the lanterns stayed lit all night long. The location she'd chosen along the docks had sailors coming in and out of her coffee shop all day and night, and they were always more than happy to keep her apprised of things out on the sea -- for a discount.

The back entrance, too, had been there from the start. The sea never left, as Zelle was so fond of saying. The sea always found a way.

And Amira had been claimed by the sea long, long ago.

She carefully carried the latte out back in one of her waterproof mugs, and Zelle was waiting there in the water for her. Impatiently.

"I thought your motto was quick service with a smile," Zelle said, treating Amira to a smile that was all sharp teeth.

"Oh?" Amira asked. "I thought you might remember the old one better. Don't mouth off to the captain if you like your ribs intact."

"Grouchy," Zelle muttered, reaching for her mug. Amira shivered just a bit as slick, wet skin brushed against her own fingertips as Zelle took it from her.

Zelle wasn't Amira's only aquatic customer. She wasn't even the only mermaid. Word had gotten out quick across the seven seas.

_Dread Amira's gone landlocked._

_The Dagger's giving it all up to man a_ coffee shop _of all things. All the fame, the fortune, the adventure. Now just a pile of caffeinated froth._

_She won't get away from us so easily._

And that's how it'd been, at first. A host of annoying sea monkeys with more ego than sense knocking on her back door just to irritate her. They were still no match for a pirate, even a retired one. But then a few of them had actually tried a drink as they'd sat there on the rocks out back nursing their wounds, and well. Word went both ways. She had quite a few regular customers these days.

It hadn't taken long for Zelle to find her. But Zelle was the one that Amira had always expected. The only surprise she'd felt when she'd heard that voice threading through her dreams once more was that it had taken her this long to track her down again.

She hadn't left since.

Amira sat down on one of the flatter rocks that she'd worn even flatter through years of use. "You know the rules, Zelle. What news have you got for me? No free drinks around here."

"One latte, one secret," Zelle mimicked, her tone just slightly mocking. She pushed waterlogged hair back off her shoulders, and Amira didn't bother tamping down the desire she felt every time she saw the way that scales dotted those shoulders like freckles. They were past that now, the two of them. They knew where the other stood. Hiding these things would do no good now, not anymore.

Zelle sighed and took a sip of her latte. "The Diamond went down a few weeks ago. Burnham's territory."

Amira scowled. She'd had more than a few run-ins with that old codfish in her time. "Any survivors?" she asked.

Zelle shrugged. "Burnham offered them quarter. You know how he is."

So no, then. Not really. The sailors who came back from Burnham never came back at all, not really. Not once he'd put his mark on them. "And the ship?"

"Cozy at the bottom of the sea. Why? Got the itch?" Zelle asked, and her eyes flashed with familiar challenge.

"Always," Amira returned affably. "But I'm too old to be out there on the sea."

"Never," Zelle said, and she put her drink down on a rock so she could scrabble up next to Amira on the shore, her long tail glimmering as she splashed out of the water. "Never, never, never. The sea's in you, Amira."

"And the sea never leaves. So I've heard, Zelle."

Zelle snorted indelicately. Mermaids rarely bothered with delicate. "And yet you never listen."

"I'm listening," Amira protested. "I always listen." All she ever did these days was _listen._

"Then listen well, pirate," Zelle said, stretching out long fingers so they could hook under Amira's chin. "You're never too old for the sea. Never too old for me. You're ours, Amira, and we will always be here to claim you. When you finally come to your senses and return to us."

Amira felt the familiar ache at Zelle's words, and it wasn't because they were false. It was because mermaids didn't understand, not really. They lived for hundreds of years, spry and clear until the day something out-bit them. They didn't know what it was to feel the sea air chill in your bones. To start to feel an ache that never quite went away. To look in the mirror and see a thousand scars that hadn't been there when they'd all started out long ago. "It can't be done, Zelle."

"It can," Zelle said, and Amira felt the familiar tug of a mermaid's spell. "You don't need to bother with a ship like before. You can join us in the deep. Humans are frail and stupid and you're too good for them. They see--" Zelle made an impatient sound and waved one slightly webbed hand towards the well-worn lines in Amira's face. "They see _these_. They care about the lines you've earned. I don't."

"I do," Amira said. Mermaids worshiped scars as evidence of one more battle survived. Humans felt them whenever a storm was on its way.

"I care about the way you pilot a ship in a squall, Amira," Zelle said, her creaking voice just as fierce as ever. "I care about the sea-gray in your eyes. The battle in your blood. The way you never gave in to us. Not once."

It was what made her so damn appealing to them, Amira knew. She also knew that Zelle was wrong. "I gave into you a few times," she said, voice going uncharacteristically soft.

Zelle faltered, just a little. This was not one of the lines to their usual game. "I remember," she whispered. "I remember how beautiful you were in the moonlight."

In those secret, stolen moments when Amira had given Zelle much more than she should have. "How beautiful I _was_."

"Are. You're still so beautiful, Amira. A lightning strike on land. And I still want you just as much as I ever did."

Amira smiled thinly. "You're doing it again."

Zelle's eyes went stormy immediately, a mercurial mermaid to the last. "I'm not."

"You are, Zelle. You think I can't tell when you're spelling me after all these years?" Amira asked. It wasn't unpleasant to be spelled by a mermaid. To hear all of your deepest desires whispered back in your ear as you lie there, breathing out ecstasy on a beach a thousand miles away. But it was always important to remember what it was.

A hook.

"I'm telling the truth," Zelle insisted, her tail twitching irritably in the water.

Amira leaned back, just a hair's breadth. "Oh, I know you are. There's always a sliver of truth in a mermaid's song. I know you do want your pretty bauble back in your collection."

Zelle just gazed at her, her eyes a sea-glass maelstrom against pale, deep-kissed skin. "Then hear my truth, pirate. I do want you to come back, and I want you to come home. The home that you've always known existed out in the deep. I want you to come find us and find yourself and live with the currents. I want to have you on your back again against the ocean floor."

Her voice was a hiss, a tuneless song that Amira knew all too well, and she felt slightly dizzy with it.

"That would last all of thirty seconds," Amira said humorlessly. "I thought you were past wanting to kill me."

"Stupid," Zelle said. "Stupid. I keep telling you and telling you and _telling_ you. The sea is _in_ you. And the sea always finds a way."

Amira sighed. "I know, Zelle. And I know that you'll always sing me exactly what I want to hear. Just finish your latte."

Zelle's tail flashed and one of Amira's nice waterproof mugs was now sinking into the harbor. Fishy bitch. "Damn the latte. You know why I come here, Amira."

"I do," Amira said. Then, on a whim, she leaned forward so she could press a brief kiss against Zelle's lips. "God help me, I do."

Zelle would come until she'd claimed her body just as she'd claimed her soul. She'd keep coming until Amira gave in. Until she threw her home, her livelihood, her new dreams aside in favor of the watery deep.

Amira hated it. She hated the way that everyone treated it as a foregone conclusion. Just another ship's captain lost to the mermaids' song. Just one more pirate who couldn't take land life and was spirited away to the deep.

She hated the way the monsters came, dripping wet and angry. She hated the way her employees teased, and she hated the sadness that lingered at the back of their jeers. Like every joke was a goodbye. Like it was only a matter of time until she took Zelle's hand and finally allowed her to drag her into the water.

She hated that she wondered. That she _wondered_ if Zelle might possibly be telling the truth. If there was some magic that would let her go to a place she had never been but already called home. If there was a place on this earth or below it that would finally give her harbor. Acceptance.

She'd heard stories. They'd all heard stories. And they'd all heard the voices that shouted in the storm, the ones that didn't sound quite like mermaids. Not quite.

Amira wondered where all those sailors really went when the mermaids sang them astray.

And then she stopped wondering at all. Amira stood abruptly, wiping the sea grime from her pants, and took a step backward from a glowering Zelle. "But it won't be today, my love. Not today."

"Where will you go?"

Amira didn't pause, just turned on her heel and walked back to the shop. "To work, Zelle. The evening rush will be coming through soon."

Silence, silence. Just the sound of water crashing against rocks. And then, "I'll sing to you tonight, Amira."

"I know," Amira said. She always did. Outside the floating decks of Amira's old prize, the Hell's Deep. Outside of the houseboat that Amira lived in alone, part of two worlds and of neither.

She always, always sang her way through Amira's dreams. And one day she might give in.

Amira sighed once more, then went inside.


End file.
